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I’ve been getting a lot of questions about lawn rollers, and whether you should roll your lawn, and I’ve personally never done it. So, today I decided what better way to either recommend or not recommend that you do it, by actually trying it out myself. So, that’s what I’m going to do.

So, I rented the roller from a local hardware store, for only around ten dollars, or so. So, I figured that’s a pretty good price to try this thing out. Essentially, it’s very, very easy. We just fill it up with water. There’s a little plug in there that we have to take out and fill it up with water. Put that back in and we start rolling. And the point of this is that, because I’m going lower on my front yard it’s much more important that the ground is more even, and there’s not as many bumps. With our climate, the things that happen between freezes and thaws and all that stuff, it just gets bumpy over time, and I’ve never done this before. I’m going to try it out today.

It actually takes quite a bit longer to fill than you think it’s going to. Just keep that in mind.

Definitely a work out if you’re going to be going up hills. So, that’s the first thing that I’m noticing right now.

Okay, so that’s the initial part of the job there, on my front yard. Is it a lot of fun? No. Is it very easy? No. Would obviously be a lot easier if I had some kind of lawn tractor to pull it, or some kind of mower or something. It’s really not that but, it’s just, take your time on it, and don’t try to kill yourself on it.

I’m going to go in one more direction on my front yard, just to level things out one way, and then go the opposite direction on there. Then I’ll try a little bit on my side yard, and that’s pretty much going to be it. We’ll be able to tell once I use my real mower on here, which also has full rollers, which is going to help a lot to keep continuously flattening this out over time. Then I will also need to do some top dressing, for sure.

Alright, so let me give you a couple final thoughts, here, on what I think of the lawn roller and how it worked out. So, it did definitely improve things a little bit. If I had to give it a number, I would have to say probably, maybe 25% or so. Just from walking in and out a couple times and using my real mower a couple times, which is coming up in my next video, which you will see really soon. It definitely helped a little bit, not quite as bumpy as it originally was. So, keep that in mind if you’re looking to use one.

It is going to give you a little bit of improvement. It’s nothing extremely drastic. But, a little bit is better than nothing for a ten dollar rental. So, a couple other things to think about with this roller, as well, is you’re going to want to have your ground be soft enough that it’s going to actually be able to roll over it, and actually smooth things out a little bit. So, if you haven’t been getting any rain, you want to water ahead of this. You don’t want the ground so soaked, though, that if you walk on it, it feels spongy, or anything like that. Because, if you take this roller across there at that point, you’re going to be creating a lot of compaction and you do not want to do that.

So, it just needs to be wet enough that it’s going to be able to smooth things out. If it’s dry then it’s not going to do a whole lot of good. So, keep that in mind. You’re going to want to do some kind of watering, make sure that the ground is soft enough that this is going to actually do some good for your ground.

Second thing is are we causing some compaction of the ground with this thing? Absolutely, yes we are. So, you have to be diligent that you’re going to be aerating your soil, if you’re going to use one of these rollers. I do mine for sure in the fall. Sometimes in the Spring and the Fall. So, one time of using this roller here, I’m not too worried about a little bit of compaction. But, if you were to use this every single year, or every Spring, and you’re not doing any aerating, then over time this is going to create a lot of compaction.

You definitely want to be doing some aerating. If you don’t know what that is, you want to learn more about it, I have some videos on aerating my yard. So, you can check those out as well. So, this roller worked for me, but I will be doing some top dressing of my lawn, as well. It’s probably a Fall project, when seeding is going to be the best time here, where I’m located.

That’s going to fill in all of those little uneven spots and kind of bring it up to the level of what we consider the bumps, right now. So, this did smooth out the top bumps on the lawn, but if you have some indentations anywhere, then you’re going to need to fill those with some top dressing.

In order to get it to be kevel over time, so that’s going to be the best process for doing that. But, for ten dollars to try this out, just to smooth my yard a little bit, I would say it was worth it. Just remember, again, that aeration is going to be very important. So, hope you enjoyed this video and it gave you some information on lawn rollers. Thanks so much for watching. We’ll see you next time.